Does anyone playing as the Germans *not* immediately grab Vichy?

[Jeff Heidman]

The game does not do a good job of giving the player any reason to leave Vichy as a puppet state. You should get some MPPs form them or somefink.

Jeff

[rleete]

Agreed. The pillage bonus (provided you take Algeria) and the annual MPPs more than offset any losses to attacking units.

[gredeker]

My impression is that attacking and conquering Vichy significantly speeds up the entry of the US (and possibly also the USSR) into the war. This is obviously not as much of a concern in the demo, but I think it would be more of a factor in a full game.

[Desert Dave]

In addition, and even better, you have a painless entry into Syria for the attack on Iraq.

The later penalty for Allies declaring war on Algeria (assuming they don't bypass Vichy and directly invade Libya or Sicily) is what?

By that time, the only minors to be negatively influence are Spain, Turkey and Sweden (if they haven't already been conquered).

Perhaps some additional consequences for an early German attack?

[willgamer]

I've been foregoing the attacking Vichy to get a jump start on Barbarossa. My impression is that there less opposition the earlier Russia is attacked. This could be mistaken though. Does anyone know anything about whether Russian defences go up each turn before it's invaded? (or any other neutral for that matter?)

[Patgod]

i forgo vichy to start the invasion of russia in '40.

[rleete]

Just to see what would happen, I did the following:

Played as Allies, AI to expert, +2 bonus. No FOW.

Declared war on all countries. This resulted in US war readiness of -90 something percent.

Disbanded all British ground units, and any air units on a city (maximum points).

Transported Canadians to France.

Moved all ships towards northern coast of France.

Moved all other air fleets to cities, to be disbanded.

Disbanded French southern corps, Syrian corps and one in Algeria.

Reinforced French front line units.

I continued to bombard with the fleet, which he attacked with air power. His subs attacked the British surface fleet! Ground units attacked French line as usual, but did not capture the low countries until the second turn. The Canadian units landed, and were eliminated, mostly with air power. By simply reinforcing with the French, they held out for five turns. Once France was eliminated, he never attempted to attack Vichy. Forgot to declare war on it as the British, so it sat neutral.

With no units except fleet, I attacked ports to slowly eliminate all ships. When no allied units were left on the map, the German AI purchased HQ units each turn. The ended up with about 9 or 10 of the things. Even after all remaining Brit units were gone, all the AI did was buy a few units, always including a HQ.

The demo ended with a huge army around Berlin. At least 5 HQ, 3-4 tank, 4 armies, and half a dozen corps. He never attacked anything, after France. Everything was wide open, and he sat and did nothing. Thinking that the huge pile of MPPs that Britain had was preventing Sealion, I tried it again. This time I bought carriers, and wasted them by strategic bombing of Antwerp. Defended by fighters, they didn't last long. Even after losing all the carriers, the AI did nothing except buy a few units. He didn't even take Gibraltar until I used that unit to invade spain. Most weren't even poised for an attack, but clustered in the middle of Germany.

This indicates (to me at least), that the AI needs to be more agressive. I guess since it had all of Europe given to it, via my declarations, it didn't want to push further. He never put any points into research, and never even threatened to invade any part of Africa.

To my way of thinking, Russia should have been invaded, and some of the points used on HQ's be put instead into tanks, armies, and maybe some research.

Now obviously this isn't a very good "real life" example. Maybe I confused it. But to not transport a single Corps to take London, even threaten USSR, or Africa means the AI is too content to sit, rather than attack.

Thoughts?

[Straha]

I, too, think that the German AI should be made more aggressive. The real problem is, though, to make them more aggressive, but in a sensible way. I 'm wild guessing here, but maybe various (alternative) "battle plans" to choose from could be imposed on the fuzzy decision procedure?

In addition, I like the idea that Germany gets MPPs from Vichy - indeed it had to pay "reparations". This special rule would make leaving Vichy alone more interesting - at the moment eliminating it seems to be almost a no-brainer.

Straha

[ May 29, 2002, 02:50 PM: Message edited by: Straha ]

[Hubert Cater]

The AI is too content to sit, rather than attack.

Don't forget that Barbarossa is on the horizon, and during the time period after the Fall of France and June 22, 1941 the German army activity was not all that eventfull. Sitting back and building might not seem like much by May of '41 but there is the bigger picture at hand.

Still, good points though and if I can make some adjustments that make it a bit more interesting I certainly will do it. Also keep in mind that although I say the game is 'balanced', it does not mean that both sides square off evenly, the Axis side is still at an overall disadvantage and the balancing is in place to reflect that. Now I am not making excuses here, but developing an AI for the Axis side (i.e. aggressor) is a lot more difficult than developing it for the Allies (i.e. defender) where you have over time a monetary advantage and usually the luxery to build and attack when the odds are just right. Also, as some of you have noted and as I've often found, playing as Allies against a non-cheating Axis AI in most other European Theater games is pointless because it is not even close to being entertaining.

What you will find is that I've tried to make an entertaining game when playing as Allies and at the default difficulty levels I think it certainly comes close, now playing at the higher difficulty levels will make it more challenging when playing a full campaign game and you may even lose as has been reported from beta testing.

Again, it's only a single year out of the war and there is a lot going on under the AI hood that will not show until a full campaign is played, so under the right conditions expect the UK to be invaded (but not baited into doing so I hope) as well as a few other surprises

Also I noticed some posts about playing at the Expert Level and not noticing much of a difference. This may be very true with the setup of the demo since Difficulty Levels take into account the whole war, I would suggest to also try increasing the Bonus Level for a more challenging game.

Thanks for the comments guys,

Hubert

[Compassion]

Hubert, I have a question about Vichy... what's the point? I haven't seen additional plunder from it and if it becomces a true neutral, then why have it? THere's no way a cojnquering Germany would let it exist if Vichy wasn't giving up extra cash and existance as a puppet only.

Sholdn't there be a special rule for Vichy?

[pzgndr]

Maybe add some reparations for not attacking. The real incentives should be to avoid early US entry and French partisans (which should be added, at least if Vichy is attacked).

I'm also curious to see the AI in action during a full campaign game. Bring it on!

[Lars]

Originally posted by Bill Macon:

The real incentives should be to avoid early US entry and French partisans (which should be added, at least if Vichy is attacked).

And the fact that as Germans you don't have to worry about defending southern France or Morocco and Algiers. Let the Allies take the political hit.

Which brings up the question of what is the downside for the Allies to Operation Torch or Dragoon? Anything? Do the Vichy French units and MPP's return to German control?

[Compassion]

Originally posted by Lars:

Which brings up the question of what is the downside for the Allies to Operation Torch or Dragoon? Anything? Do the Vichy French units and MPP's return to German control?

Well huh.. You're right. THe more I thikn about it the more I think that there should be a set of special case rules for the creation of (and disbanding of) Vichy France...

[grimlord]

true that...as it stands there is no reason not to invade vichy...no incentive at all...same goes for sweden...i think both should be looked at more closely

[John DiFool]

Originally posted by grimlord:

true that...as it stands there is no reason not to invade vichy...no incentive at all...same goes for sweden...i think both should be looked at more closely

Sweden actually sent a lot of its iron ore to Germany during the war-that probably should be modeled somehow. Otherwise those two resource hexes look mighty tempting...

John DiFool

[BloodyBucket]

The Vichy tribute idea is an interesting one. Didn't Vichy France almost declare war on England after Mers-El-Kebir?

Having Sweden ship resources to Germany also would be nice.

[Lone Wolf]

Originally posted by grimlord:

true that...as it stands there is no reason not to invade vichy...no incentive at all...same goes for sweden...i think both should be looked at more closely

But this assumes that occupying Vichy France was not the right thing to do. In fact, it does seem to me that there really WAS no good reason not to do so, and I've never understood why Hitler didn't. I would not be in favor of rules which force you to follow historic courses of action. What's the point? We know who won. The interesting thing, especially in a grand strategic game, is to explore Different courses of action. If there would have been certain negative consequences to occupying Vichy, by all means model them, but don't make the consequences prohibitive (unless they really would have been, but this seems unlikely, since Hitler did, in fact, ultimately do so anyway).

[grimlord]

Originally posted by Lone Wolf:

[/qb]

But this assumes that occupying Vichy France was not the right thing to do. In fact, it does seem to me that there really WAS no good reason not to do so, and I've never understood why Hitler didn't. I would not be in favor of rules which force you to follow historic courses of action. What's the point? We know who won. The interesting thing, especially in a grand strategic game, is to explore Different courses of action. If there would have been certain negative consequences to occupying Vichy, by all means model them, but don't make the consequences prohibitive (unless they really would have been, but this seems unlikely, since Hitler did, in fact, ultimately do so anyway).[/QB]

[Lone Wolf]

I think we agree completely, and the complex relationship with Sweden MUST be properly modeled. Any more problems we can solve?